Thursday, March 26, 2015

Why Latin America Rejects US Military Presence

Ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 the United
States has claimed territorial rights to the Western Hemisphere, essentially
warning the rest of the world to back off from USA’s backyard. The American way
of proclaiming itself the big cheese of the New World manifested by quickly ousting
colonial competitor Spain from Florida and the Southwest and two decades later
declaring war on Mexico, stealing a third of its sovereign territory to ensure
that Texas, New Mexico and Arizona became part of the bountiful chosen nation fast
expanding from sea to shining sea. Next came more than a century of constant military interventions
from the 1850’s in Nicaragua and Panama that brought forced labor and slavery
to the indigenous population.

Long before the US became the global bully, it was the
Western Hemisphere’s neighborhood thug. The 1898 Spanish American War born of
the false flag sinking of the USS Maine facilitated colonial expansion and
occupation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Genocide-war
casualty expert RJ Rummel estimates up to near half a
million Filipinos died in the bloodbath when the US
military invaded, conquered and re-colonized the freshly independent nation of
the Philippines during the Spanish American War.

As the US ascended to global power throughout the course
of the following century, it became increasingly intolerant toward other
nations’ autonomy or any and all regional claims of a “Monroe Doctrine” of
their own. Having fought its own colonial wars far beyond its own hemisphere,
the United States increasingly engaged in tampering with other countries’
internal affairs, regularly resorting to assassination of foreign leaders and
inciting coups as it so chose around the world. And true to its New World
Doctrine, the US maintained tightest control over the hapless nations of Central
America and the Caribbean.

As examples of various “Monroe interventions,” a brief history
follows. In 1903 for global trading purposes the US wanted a canal, so it invaded
Panama, snatching up its land to construct and hold the Panama Canal from its
1914 opening up until 1999. Over this last century countless US Marine
invasions took place in Central American nations like Panama and Nicaragua.
Cuba and Haiti in the Caribbean were also constantly victimized with military
aggression and regime changes, in Haiti right up to the present. US backed coups
of democratically elected leaders during the last half century alone occurred in
1964 Brazil, 1965 Dominican Republic, 1973 Chile (ushering in brutal dictator
Pinochet), 1973 Uruguay, 1980 El Salvador (that brought Reagan’s death squads
also to Nicaragua), a CIA linked plane crash in 1981killing Panama’s leader, and
more coups and invasions in 1982 and again 1983 in Guatemala and 1989 Panama.
And then there are the incessant economic sanctions and embargos used against smaller
nations like Cuba and Nicaragua that resist US oppression. Over the years thousands
of Latin Americans died in the name of America’s “manifest destiny.”

By the end of the twentieth century when the US
anointed itself as the only global superpower on the planet, American Empire powerbrokers
began their ambitious campaign of world domination against its defeated cold war
enemies still deemed its strongest potential threats. Thus the plan was launched
to systematically isolate Russia and China from the rest of the world by
implanting hostile puppet governments in every nation that borders them, with the
ultimate aim of placing missiles aimed at Russia, completely usurping all other
nations’ regional rights by expanding the Monroe Doctrine well beyond America’s
own hemisphere but to the entire globe.

Once the Soviet Empire was broken up in the early
1990’s, at this point no other country could dare make similar claim of
exercising any regional power over its neighbors anywhere in the world except
the mighty US Empire that self-justified its longtime double standard hypocrisy
always with its grandiose sense of empowered exceptionalism.
This notion of exclusive impunity that the US is simply immune from compliance
with any and all international laws and treaties including all Geneva
Convention or United Nations Charter rules just because it happens to be the most
powerful nation on earth meant that as the global village bully it can at will threaten,
impose, dictate, control and even destroy all other nations through
unchallenged global hegemony. And so goes the US foreign policy enraptured by
its own regime change madness to makeover any nation it so chooses using the worn
out lie of spreading democracy when it really spread its own selfish agenda of
destabilizing, plundering and enslaving in insurmountable debt every nation and
people possessing precious dwindling resources or geopolitical chessboard
significance to the US Empire as the self-serving master of the world. Without
as much as declaring war, the United States in recent years has constantly
violated international laws and committed countless war crimes invading,
occupying for decades at a time, raping and destroying nations like Afghanistan,
Iraq (several times over), Libya, and Syria (of course with a little proxy help
from its secretly created
and funded “terrorist” mercenary monster allies al Qaeda/ISIS),
never failing to leave demolished failed states in its wake.

Then just over a year ago the neocon megalomaniacs
assaulted another autonomous nation, investing $5 billion to subversively
overthrow another democratically elected president in Ukraine. Then when a vast
majority of ethnic Russians living in Crimea that for centuries were always
part of Russia voted overwhelmingly to once again become annexed, and President
Putin moved to protect both the citizens of Crimea as well as defend his
strategically located Russian naval base in Sebastopol, Crimea, suddenly the
world bully American Empire began its next propaganda
war in futile attempts to demonize Putin with nonstop lies and
false flags behind a thinly veiled design to manipulate the Russian leader into
reacting, thus serving as provocation for the US-NATO forces as the clear
aggressor to invade and occupy yet another country in yet another war. But this
time what could easily turn into World War III would be against a nuclear
powered enemy and would risk the end of all life on planet earth. Yet these
suicidal gestures of an evil Empire in freefall decline both morally and
economically are being puppeteered by Western oligarchs in the midst of losing
power and control to the emerging power of the East.
For many centuries the central
banking cabal has used war to drive both its power and profit.

On Tuesday by the overwhelming House
vote of 348-48, Congress moved forward with the Obama
plan to provide heavy armaments to the corrupt de facto Ukrainian government
despite Putin’s warnings and Europe’s ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict
through peaceful negotiations. The vast majority of treasonous American leaders
controlling the
US crime syndicate government possess absolutely no
regard for humanity, truth or justice and apparently are determined to plunge
the planet headlong into catastrophic world war. A year ago researchers concluded
the US government no longer represents the interests of American citizens but
instead those of the Western oligarchs, the 1% of the world’s richest
population of ruling elitists that as of next year will own more
wealth than the rest of us 99% of the 7.2 billion earth
inhabitants combined. Something’s demonically wrong and obscene with that NWO equation.

Yet with all this doom and gloom so rapidly unfolding
and accelerating during these first few months of 2015, there remains but one populated
continent on this earth that appears relatively free of US military domination
and control. That laudable distinction belongs exclusively to nations in the US
Empire’s own south facing backyard within the Western Hemisphere - South
America. Suffering centuries of abuse and exploitation as Empire’s so called
banana republics, despite their economic
challenges that remain to this day, Latin American nations are emerging as
a formidable political force endowed with natural resources and an empowering,
growing independence and defiance toward the global giant to the north.

Emboldened by the largest oil reserves on the planet,
this century has witnessed the charismatic leadership of the late Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez (until his death a couple years ago) leading
the continental rebellion against the United States, calling Bush
the “devil” before the UN, while calling upon South
America to develop its own self-protective line of defense - a walled off independence,
unity and solidarity away from the aggressive, controlling and destructive US
Empire’s global dominance.

Hugo Chavez led the way for fourteen years shunning
Washington’s claws bent on tapping into his nation’s vast oil reserves. But
Chavez used his nationalized oil company to provide important revenue to uplift
Venezuelans’ standard of living with improved educational opportunity,
increased hospitals, affordable housing and transportation infrastructure. Any time
a smaller
nation in the world rejects US Empire and its predatory system
of exploitation of the nation’s people and its land resources through privatized,
greed-driven transnational corporations, through lies and propaganda that
nation is invariably declared a US enemy. In other words, if a leader does what
is best for his or her nation’s residents producing economic growth and
prosperity for its own population, that nation is automatically targeted for “regime
change” attack economically, politically and often even militarily by the US Empire.
Viewed as a revolutionary champion of the people from humble roots much like
his own constituents, and willing to boldly challenge and successfully
outmaneuver blatant failed US attempts to overthrow him from power and temporarily
did in 2002 and failed in more attempts later, Hugo
Chavez overcame the Empire wrath and regional conflict with bordering Colombia
and ultimately embraced continental Latin unity as an emerging defense against
US imperialism.

The pivotal turning point came in August 2010 when
enough pressure was brought to bear on Colombia by Chavez and other neighboring
countries after Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe signed an agreement the year
before to allow eight
more US military bases. The nixed plan was ostensibly to
fight the same cocaine smuggling trade the US government makes billions in
profits from as well as defeat the leftist insurgent rebels operating inside
Colombia. Ultimately the Colombian courts wisely decided the bases were
“unconstitutional” because they were never approved of by the nation’s
legislators. It was simply a deal that the corrupt outgoing Colombian president
had acquiesced to after American Empire pressured for a stronger military
foothold on the continent. Though no new bases or additional US soldiers and
contractors would be coming to Colombia, 1400 US personnel that were already
part of a previously ratified agreement stationed at existing bases were
allowed to stay. As a result of the Colombian court decision, the US was
successfully banished from making any further inroads of a US military presence
inside South America.

This Colombian decision came just a year after Ecuador
gave
the boot to the US Air Force occupying an air base
sharing the runway of Manta’s city airport. The US base designed to be the primary South
American “drug interdiction” watchtower from the sky was formally closed in
2009 after the United States had invested $71 million in airport renovation and
over the last decade in operation had brought an annual revenue to the city of
$6.5 million.

But the city of Manta moved onto bigger and better
investments than the US Empire could offer with its thinly disguised
imperialistic hegemony. Instead Ecuador went ahead with joint business ventures
in partnership with both neighboring Venezuela and Hong Kong. Chavez made a sweet
deal with Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa to construct a $6
billion oil refinery on the outskirts of Manta. Meanwhile, a
Hong Kong firm secured a deal to finance and construct over a half billion
dollar deepest water port on the Pacific coast of South America that geographically
lies closest to Asia. Instead of giving the same half
bill over to the fake enemy terrorists ISIS in Yemen like stupid Empire
does resulting in a far more dangerously destructive world, China smartly invested
the same amount of money into our same hemisphere’s nations but in renewable
and sustainable infrastructure that offers win-win outcomes to both Asia and
South America. In contrast, the US foreign policy for too long has always
self-servingly invested in militarization and privatization that only benefits
a small ruling elite rather than nations and whole populations. What goes
around, comes around.

The U.S. stopped being
the benchmark of what is good for Latin America. Because Latin America did
everything that the US asked it to do and wasn't able to get out of poverty,
the North American myth lost political weight.

Latin American countries have long realized that the
drug cartels work hand in hand with US government agencies to export their illegal
drugs into North America. The US
government’s criminal enterprise is partnered by the
central banking cabal for safe money laundering. Just this week American Drug Enforcement
Agency personnel got busted partying
with drug cartel money.

The corrupt political system profiting from the international
drug trade has not been more apparent than in Central American nations where
local criminal cartels’ and Washington’s criminal interests appear one and the
same. Honduras readily comes to mind as the worst Central American victim of
another covert US-induced coup
in June 2009 when another democratically elected
leader closely associated with Chavez, President Manuel Zelaya, was ousted
because as a rancher he attempted to improve the lives of his indigenous agrarian
poor class. Honduras was targeted for regime change as Obama and his Secretary
of State Hilary Clinton’s strategy to roll
back democratic gains made in various countries during the Bush
years. After training virtually the entire Honduran officer corps, the US
planted a murderous military junta into power that’s been brutalizing Hondurans
as the murder
capital of the world ever since while partnering with the
local drug cartels, their criminal gangs and agents of the US government moving
drugs from South America into Mexico and North America. The 50,000
children largely from Honduras and El Salvador who showed up
at the US border last year was but one among many tragic outcomes of the
morally reprehensible US policy.

When Chavez died two years ago, the US realized that
his successor Nicolas Maduro was far more vulnerable as the US has repeatedly
attempted to undermine his power and position with its fanatical regime change
agenda. While Ukraine was deposed of its president a year ago last February,
CIA and State Department NGO’s were hard at work in Venezuela drumming up Maduro
opposition culminating in violent street protests not unlike those in Kiev. Like
clockwork a year later, Washington attempted yet another coup but once again
failed on Valentine’s Day this year. Obama recently hypocritically declared
Venezuela a threat to US national security, with more
outright lies as he reacts with sour grapes to his recent botched coup effort
and his jailed coup co-conspirators, attempting to scare weak links in both the
Venezuelan government as well as all the Latin American governments assessing
if he can lure any defectors away from their unified continental anti-Empire stance.

Leaders from Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador immediately
responded to Obama’s verbal attack on Venezuela, verbalizing strong
condemnation against his overt threats. If anything, the US president’s harsh
words that have no real consequence (other than certain Venezuelan families
cannot enter the United States) are in effect motivating South American nations
to rally around Maduro and strengthening their alliances and mutual support against
their common threat (not unlike Russia and China has been forced to do in
response to the US Empire renewing its cold war enemies).

Meanwhile, the designated military structure for US
presence in Latin America and the Caribbean - the US South Command – is hollow
and more in name only as it hardly has anything to command these days because
almost no US military outposts are located in the Western Hemisphere south of
the United States. Very nearly to a country, every government has either kicked
out the US military or has consistently refused to let the Empire wolf back in.
One too many invasions from the past have come to haunt the rejected US Empire
today. In fact, these days more often a visible Russian military presence is
occasionally observed on Latin soil or sailing in southern waters or docked in South
American ports than any US military deployments.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov last April
visited Chile, Cuba, Nicaragua and Peru. Additionally, Russian defense minister
Sergei
Shoigu even went further, stressing the importance that
Russian military forces should be assigned to foreign military bases, without
naming exactly where. It was likely more a public relations ploy to excite the
US national security neocons since clearly the Empire forces are being shunned
while Latin America courts favor with the Russians. South American nations are
unlikely to invite another foreign power to any permanent military bases since
they collectively are emerging as an autonomous and independent political force
unto themselves, and injecting Russia or the United States military into that
mix would be both disruptive and counterproductive.

In Central America only Honduras has US military
personnel stationed at Soto
Cano Air Base listed to provide medical support to
Hondurans as well as disaster relief. Another base located in El Salvador is
Comalapa Naval Base opened in 2000 after the 1999 US departure from Panama. Comalapa
employs just 25 US military and 40 civilian personnel (according to its
website). Its mission is primarily narco-surveillance. Two more small anti-drug
monitoring stations are located in the Caribbean Dutch territories on the
islands of Curacao and Aruba. An air station on the island of Antigua is in the
process of relocating to Western Australia. The radar station is moving to the
Pacific to mainly monitor China’s growing military satellite activity in that
part of the globe. Finally a secret black ops station in the Bahamas called
“Area 51 of the Caribbean” is said to develop new naval military technology.

But outside these small scale outposts according to
the Pentagon, no other active military bases are occupied by US armed forces.
South Command commander General
John F Kelly maintains that there is little current need
for deployment of US troops in southern nations of the Western Hemisphere. His
commander-in-chief notwithstanding, the general believes that no major security
issues or serious threats in Latin America warrant a greater US military
presence since numerous global hotspots that do require American military
forces obviously take priority. Additionally, recent fiscal budget cuts factored
in are also given to explain the near complete lack of US military presence in
Central and South America. But then these “official reasons” sound more like a
face-saving rationale rather than admitting the truth that the dominant mindset
of Latin Americans who at one time chanted in protest “Yankee go home!” are now
in unison and solidarity chanting even louder “Yankee stay home!”

What does unfortunately remain open as the Caribbean
blight on the US Empire is an old US naval base operating since 1903 - Cuba’s
Guantanamo Bay. It’s the Western Hemispheric mecca for housing illegal, unaccounted
for US torture, false, unjustified imprisonment and grossest inhumanity still
going on daily today since 2002. Though Obama has continued for seven years
feebly promising and vowing to close it, the puppet president has yet to keep
his word. Last week a teenager asked the president what he would like to change
from the first day he was elected and Obama answered, “I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day.”
That lame response failed to bolster his nonexistent credibility. After all, he
also promised to be the “most open and transparent president in US history.”
The man ad nauseam throughout his regime has only proven he cannot be trusted. But
then neither can 99% of the United States leaders in government or the
military.

It’s a bit of irony that the global superpower killing
machine occupies over 1000 military posts throughout every corner of the globe
except one, the one sitting in its south-side backdoor no less – Latin America.
All those past military interventions, coups and tyrannical violence and injustice
toward Latin America have soured relations now. The up and coming nations south
of our border were brutally beaten down for more than a century by the US and
now that they are rising in power with friendlier ties to cold war enemies
Russia and China, once again karma’s come home to roost, biting the big evil
Empire squarely in its imperial ass.

Joachim
Hagopian is a West
Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on
his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on
US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the
military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as
a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter
century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research and a syndicated columnist at Veterans Today.